Swallows unhappy with People’s Cup votes

MASERU – Vodacom Premier League outfit Swallows are crying foul over the voting results in the People’s Cup. Swallows missed out on making it into the top four slots by just 50 votes.

Instead, the honour will go to Bantu, Lesotho Defence Force, Linare and Lioli who finished as the top four in the SMS voting competition. The voting lines opened in early March and closed on Sunday, April 16.

Speaking at a press conference yesterday, the club said it has written to the Premier League Management Committee (PLMC) asking for fairness and transparency.

When the voting lines were opened, there was an option for bulk voting and each team was assigned its own merchant code.

The bulk voting however was closed before the normal voting. Econet Telecom Lesotho (ETL), which was running the voting process on Sunday evening live streamed the voting which allowed each team to see where they were. The stream was closed at 11pm which gave clubs one hour before cut off at midnight.

When live streaming was closed, Swallows was leading the pack and had a healthy lead on at least three teams that ended up surpassing them.

Swallows brand manager Atang Tlopo said they were surprised when they saw themselves in fifth position the following day.

“We were on top when the live streaming stopped, we knew voting was still going on and we were not exception to that. To our surprise our happiness was busted and we were fifth, maybe it’s something that is explainable, that we were outvoted by other teams. Our dissatisfaction comes from lack of transparency that the live streaming provided, this make us have complaints,” Tlopo said.

“As stakeholders in the competition our expectation was that there would be an element of transparency and I think live streaming was an answer to that, but things were done the other way round. It was closed before the voting ended. We were denied the right to know. In a competition where we are participating with our fans’ money, we were denied the right to know how it’s going,” he said.

Tlopo began his address by saying Swallows were given a wrong team code and it wasn’t rectified for a while. By the time it was fixed voting had already started and they believe their votes may have gone to another team which would be Naughty Boys.

“Our supporters showed by their votes that they want their team to participate in this tournament. When we first started there was team codes swap, it was announced that we were T15 but that was a code for another team. There is a chance we lost votes that went to another team, we were left behind when the voting started,” he said.

The club’s vice-president admin, Lichaba Setjeo, said when they looked at their final votes as compared to when live streaming stopped, there was an increase of 300 votes. However, their opponents’ votes increased drastically which gave them a suspicion that others may have still used bulk voting.

Tlopo said they have asked for fully audited results to be sure that what has been presented to the public is a true reflection of the voting process.

“Under normal circumstances in competitions where there is voting, before you release results you have to audit them. We would like to have fully audited results, even if they can give us of these five teams so that we can see how they were voted for,” he said.

Puleng Masoabi, Econet public relations officer, said bulk voting was closed a few days before the single voting, and the teams knew this.

“I can assure you there was no bulk voting (on Sunday April 16), it was closed a few days before and it was just single voting (system) via SMS,” she said.

She said Econet have not received any complaint from Swallows, adding that any communication about any complaint will come from PLMC.

On the closure of the live stream an hour before voting ended, she said it was in the terms and conditions that were laid out for the teams before the voting started.

The communication was made via the clubs’ communications and marketing managers so, therefore, clubs cannot say they did not know.

On the code swap, she said she is hearing about it for the first time, she is not aware of such. “We run everything fairly and we have the report. Should there be a problem we will release it, but they must not accuse us without proof,” she said.

Tlalane Phahla